They approached the young lady as she waved and greeted her introducing themselves one by one before she herself followed suit, "I'm Ergnas, welcome! What brings you here?"
Hirune tapped Ellen on the shoulder and whispered in her ear, "Isn't that "sangre" backwards? Ya 'know, blood in Spanish?"
'Since when are you a de-cypher-er or whoever the person that solves cyphers is called?' Namulenza asked just to be completely ignored.
Ellen nodded, "Oh, sorry we were just exploring and ended up coming here to look around. Sadly, it seems as though the night has caught up to us. I am ashamed to ask this of you, but may we stay for the night in your humble abode?"
"Oh- Yeah go right ahead! I do get lonely up here from time to time so I'd actually appreciate your company! Come in, come in," Ergnas said with a sweet smile as she walked to her shack and held the door open for them.
Once they came, they realized the shack was way larger on the inside than on the outside, with a combined kitchen and living room, right past that a master bedroom with a small library hall between it and a small floor area that led to a guest room and a bathroom.
"It might seem a bit weird, but I've actually made the guest bedroom my own as I find the master bedroom to be too large for me. So, you all can have that one and I'll sleep in the guest bedroom, if you need anything just come in. For now, Hirune and Tundra, you may do whatever you want. Me and Ellen have some things to talk about," Ergnas said as she waved them off.
Ellen also waved them off, saying that they had some important business to talk about in private. They had originally denied going anywhere else in the house when Ergnas told them, but now that Ellen told them they decided to check out where they'd be sleeping. Which they found to be extremely gray, the only thing in it being a bed for two and two beds for one.
"This is... A guest room if I've ever seen one," Tundra said as he sat one the big bed. "I call dibs on this bed."
"Huh?! You can't just call dibs on the bed!"
"Yeah, I can. Who's stopping me?"
"Ugh!" She stood there for a moment, staring at Tundra intensely and thinking before suddenly smirking. "Well, calling dibs on something isn't really fair considering it wasn't an agreement. And if somethings not fair it could be considered unjust, so~!"
"You're pulling at straws..."
"I'd rather pull at straws than give u easily!" She said as she jumped past him onto the middle of the bed laying down, "Easy! I'm taking up the most space, therefore it's mine!"
"What..." Tundra sat there in silence for a moment before emotion suddenly sparked in him, "That's not fair!"
***
Ellen and Ergnas spoke about the ground rules for their stay, sprinkling in a couple of words to try to get the other to expose themselves.
"Well, those rules seem pretty fair. Keep the space clean, don't break anything, don't be too loud, alright. I'll go tell them now," Ellen said as she stood up.
Ergnas followed suit, "I think I might've left some of my farming tools in there so I'm just going to get that real quick."
As they approached the room, they heard giggling, a lot of it. Ellen knocked loudly then opened the door to find Hirune sitting on Tundra's lower stomach with her hair extremely messy tickling him, her words cutting off as she looked back, and Tundra pushing her hands up to her face as she stopped tickling him, catching his breath.
"O... k..." Ellen said as she stepped aside and Ergnas walked in and reached under the bed, pulling out a rake and a hoe then leaving.
Hirune sat down next to Tundra and nudged him, which he didn't answer to, then kicked his leg which prompted him to finally sit up.
"We were fighting over who would get the bed," Hirune fixing her hair. Tundra nodded in agreement.
"So... You decided to fight it out instead of doing rock, paper scissors or something?" Tundra kept nodding then suddenly stopped as if he had a delay.
"We did try that, but Tundra's a sore loser."
"Pretty sure you were the one that kept on-"
"I deny all accusations."
"Well... Ergnas told me some of the rules we have to follow. Which are-"
"Basic house rules?" Tundra asked.
"Yeah, how'd you know?"
"This is basically just a sleepover but with a stranger."
Ellen nodded and before leaving said, "Well it seems like Hirune was winning so I'd say she gets the queen-sized bed."
She pumped her fist in the air and whispered 'yes!' Tundra just rolled his eyes, "She's only saying that because you were on top of me. It's very obvious that I was winning."
She rolled her eyes, "Well you can enjoy the bed for now, I'm going to see if any of the books there are related to Namulenza."
Tundra nodded as he laid down and instantly fell asleep as Hirune stepped out of the room and started reading the spines of all the books. Yet she didn't find any Namulenza related books, what she did find was that the books were color coded and that there was one red book in the blue section and one blue book in the red section, which she personally didn't mind, but she was sure that the owner would. So, out of the kindness of her heart, she swapped out the books, which automatically caused the bookshelf to slide to the side. Behind the bookshelf there was a dark hallway with red paint saying, 'Shrine of Aka.'
Reading this and recognizing the name as the name of the blood goddess she said sorry to the owner under her breath before walking in, as she felt she not only invaded the owner's privacy, but possibly the goddesses and wanted to apologize to her personally. Once she finished walking down the hall, she found herself in front of a large statue of a very beautiful woman standing there, one of her hands stretched outwardly towards the entrance with her palm facing down. A red liquid pouring from her eyes, mouth, ears, root of her hair, and the hand outstretched towards the entrance. The red liquid let off the strong odor of blood as it flowed down the goddess's statue and into a fountain under it. Under the statue there was also sixteen more statues of people kneeling in front of the goddess's statue with a hand ripping through their chests and holding their hearts up. Right in front of the fountain laid a golden rusted with some writing in Spanish on the floor in front of it that read, 'Sacrificio de sangre,' which translates to 'blood sacrifice.'
Reaching the rusty plate, she found a knife on the ledge of the fountain, which she grabbed and used to cut decently deep into her palm, deeper then intended in fact, the blood from her hand splashing onto the plate before pouring for a bit. Biting her lip, she threw her hand back and held her palm, hopping that the amount she gave was enough to be forgiven, as she had heard many stories of how unforgiving Aka could be if her privacy was invaded.
After taking deep breaths for a couple seconds and holding back some tears, she stood up and started walking back. As she did, she heard a voice much different from Namulenza's say, ':O, someone's finally given me a small blood sacrifice from this location after ten years! You can't imagine how happy I am! In fact, here have a blessing! That wound seems pretty bad, so you get minor blood regeneration, alright? Yeah? Good, now if you ever find another shrine of mine make sure to give me another blood sacrifice and I'll make your blood regeneration just a little better alright? Yeah? Good now get back to your friends! Hope to talk to you soon, which by soon I mean like the next ten years or so, hopefully.'
She blinked a couple of times, looked back at the shrine, nodded and walked out, being careful to not get caught leaving the bookshelf and going back into the master guest room. Luckily for her, it seemed to be midnight already as the moon was well in the sky, so she must've been clutching her hand for way longer than she thought.
Looking at the queen-sized bed, she saw Tundra still laying there, as for Ellen, she was nowhere to be found. Climbing onto her bed and yawning she shook Tundra, who didn't react.
"Hey... Hey ice cube, wake up!" She said gently, as she shook him a little. She shook him a little harder and spoke a little louder yet still no reaction. Then she lifted his arm and let go of it, his arm falling fully limp onto his stomach. Nearly having a heart attack, she checked his pulse, letting out a sigh of relief as it was stable and so was his breath, knowing this, she proceeded to try and just push him off the bed, but she was too scared of him hitting his head on the floor so she just laid down with her back to him and slowly drifted off to sleep.
***
Outside of the shack, Ellen stood near Ergnas the edge of the peak on the side that faces the docks, "So I'm guessing you knew from the beginning?"
"Yep, right from the get-go-go, and so did Hirune, well, she knew that you were lying about your name at least. She's pretty impressive for a rookie!"
"Is she now? Well, I feel a little bad that she's going to lose you so soon. After all you still have so much to teach her."
"Nothing she can't learn herself, I see something truly special in her. In fact, she learnt about Incantations without me telling her."
"Spying on people with your Eye of Death again now, are we?"
"Well, Sangre, we both know that's something I can't control!" Ellen finished as she pushed Sangre into the ocean with enough force to part the ocean slightly, yet it wasn't very effective as the flood filtered out of the water and wrapped around Sangre in an orb protecting her as she rose into the air, countless gallons of blood shooting out of her feet.
"Did you forget this is the blood ocean? It's made out of mostly blood, my specialty! You've just accepted your death now, haven't you?"
"I'm pretty sure I was the victor the last 3 times, and also, do you know what blood is mostly made out of?"
"Oh, shut up, we both know my loses don't count due to your little cheat-code of death, as for your question, I may be the daughter of Aka herself but that doesn't mean I'm very well educated in my specialty."
"Well, it's actually mostly water, which means I don't need to do anything as my friend can beat you for me," Ellen said as she made a black hole in a random spot in the ocean. The water spiraling and spaghettifying as it got sucked in, before Ellen suddenly released the black hole making it disappear.
"What was that supposed to do? Make the sea-monsters try to attack me all at once? Because FYI, they're all too scared to try-"
She suddenly got cut off by a spear shooting out of the ocean and piercing her stomach. As she looked down, she saw a girl with a shark tail cracking her neck while swimming in the water.
"Ellen, how much longer do you plan to fight with her? We both know you can just poof her out of existence with a black hole so why don't you do it?"
They both looked at Kala before laughing hysterically, "Really Ellen? You didn't tell her?"
"I mean I thought it was kind of obvious but, Kala she isn't my enemy, no by no means, in fact she's quite the contrary! She's my best friend ever! We just fight from time to time, after all every friendship is a bit bumpy sometimes, isn't that right Sangre?"
"I couldn't agree more," She responded as she controlled the blood in the ocean and used it to chain Kala to the peaks.
"Alright, lets fight for real now," Ellen said as she appeared in front of Sangre in a flash with a black hole in her hand which she planned to send through her stomach.